Not only animals and humans host a complex community of microorganisms – plants do this as well. Researchers at ETH Zurich have recently published two new studies that shed light on fundamental aspects of these close – and often overlooked – relationships. Hundreds of different bacterial species live in and on leaves and roots of plants. A research team led by Julia Vorholt from the Institute of Microbiology at ETH Zurich, together with colleagues in Germany, first inventoried and categorised…
An international team of astronomers including a number of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, has announced the results of a comprehensive search for a background of low-frequency gravitational waves. These light-year-scale ripples, a consequence of general relativity, permeate all of spacetime and could originate from mergers of the most massive black holes in the Universe or from events occurring soon after the formation of the Universe in the Big Bang. The International Pulsar…
New results from the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector put the best-ever limits on particles called WIMPs, a leading candidate for what makes up our universe’s invisible mass. Figuring out the nature of dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up most of the mass in our universe, is one of the greatest puzzles in physics. New results from the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector, LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), have narrowed down possibilities for one of the leading dark matter…
These differ in part considerably from the propagation strategies of endemic plant species. Dr. Ingolf Kühn and Dr. Sonja Knapp of the Helmholtz Centre for…
Remains of dead bacteria have far greater meaning for soils than previously assumed. Around 40 per cent of the microbial biomass is converted to organic soil…
In their joint publication in the journal „Ecology Letters” German and American biologists have reported an increase in biomass production in ecosystems…
Computer simulations play an increasingly important role in the description and development of new materials. Yet, despite major advances in computer…
For several decades scientists have been trying to come up with an explanation for the formation of the enigmatic, vegetation-free circles frequently found in…
The in vivo visualization and monitoring of the starting points of microtubules — filaments responsible for organising the mitotic spindle — provides novel…
In recent years, there has been increasing discussion of the efficiency of university teaching and the proper way of imparting professional teaching…
A potential implication is that as substitution becomes arduous, global society’s expanding needs will be harder to fill. They explain this in an article…
The body plan of octopuses is nothing if not unique, with a sophisticated brain in a soft, bilaterally symmetrical body, encircled by eight radially…
Students of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) can now opt for taking a more research-oriented approach to their subject by…
This could help to explain why some insect species in some years are very abundant pests and cause substantial damage in agriculture and forestry.
The recovery of waste heat in all kinds of processes poses one of the main challenges of our time to making established processes more energy-efficient and…
The research reactor TRIGA at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has reached a new milestone: after 50 years of consecutive operation, TRIGA Mainz…
The Institute of Nuclear Chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) will get a subterranean building for its new cyclotron. Parallel to the…
One of the big mysteries in the history of the Earth is the emergence of plate tectonics. When exactly did the processes of plate tectonics begin that today…
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved a new research unit focusing on the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy during the JUNO experiment….
Ants and humans represent approximately the same amount of biomass on our planet. Together with other social insects, ants make up a third of the entire animal…
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